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"Textual
and Documentary Excavations"
1. Select a
passage from a literary text discussed in lecture, which you wish to be the
site of your "textual excavation."
Your site may, for example, be an actus from one of Terence’s
plays or a numbered section from your translations of Plutarch's Lives.
2 Select a document from Lewis and Reinhold that
is from the second or first centuries prior to the consulship of M. Cicero and
C. Antonius. Be very careful here to
note whence your document comes. If, for
example, are looking at selections from Livy, you are out of bounds for Livy is
after Augustus. And you should try to avoid any "document" that is in
fact from a literary source. The xii
tabulae may be an exception to this dictum.
3. Once you
obtain professorial approval for your selections you should begin to
"excavate" your text and document to discover all that you can about
the social history of Rome and Romans in the second and first centuries. Your work is not meant to be definitive but
must place close attention on the topics,
personae, and events that we have covered in class.
4. One method for making your work more systematic is to design a list of questions that you will ask your text and your document. The questions are bound to change but they may still be important even when there is no ready answer to the majority or even most of them.
5. Please refer to your document by its documentary title
e.g. CIL 1 2nd ed. 6-9 (not Lewis and Reinhold 1, 523.)
Due: Friday 13
December 12:00 in 244 Vanier College
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